Rocket Manufacturing

Rocket Mfg, Rock Valley, IA

Another great success story modeled after Cardinal Mfg. April of 2015, Chad Janzen, the Superintendent of Schools for Rock Valley Schools wrote a thank you note to Craig Cegielski of Cardinal Mfg thanking the Cardinal program for the inspiration. By September, a new 10,000 square foot facility was in production. May of 2016 he provides a follow-up summary of the success to date. Read more about it below.

Craig,

We are nearing the end of the first full year of Rocket Manufacturing. Our kids have done a tremendous job. We visited Cardinal Manufacturing four years ago…without your vision, we wouldn’t be where we are today. If you’d like to peruse what we are doing, here is link to our publicity page: http://rocketmanufacturing.weebly.com/publicity.html. There a couple videos on the site…the first is a news story from last October and the other is from a state video contest on “Why stay in Iowa.” We estimate we will have $20,000 in revenue (not profit). The growth by each individual student has been amazing. All the things you talked about, we have seen…and it is only the end of our first year!

Thanks again for your model! I know it has been a long time since our visit and that you get many visitors and we can see on your website all the great thing you are doing. Just wanted to let you know that someone that visited took your vision to heart and did something about it. Hope you’ve had a great year!

We are well on our way in implementing Rocket Manufacturing. We're in the process of completing our new 10,000 square foot shop. We started our class this semester with the hopes of visiting local manufacturing businesses, bringing them to us, and spending time building tables, etc. for the new shop. We are already ahead of schedule. The students are making custom-made gates for local farmers. They are also designing a custom-built dog kennel for the back of a pickup. Attached is our first gate delivery.

It has been amazing the support we have received so far. We have 3 CNC machines lined up from local businesses along with a variety of things we have purchased well below market cost. Thank you for inspiring us to do great things!

Teacher Workshops

Many teachers and administrators contact Cardinal Manufacturing each year to learn how to create a program like it in their districts. We will be holding a workshop on Thursday, October 11, 2018 to show you how we started and how we do things today.